


Biography of a Rat

by Hypnosistrash



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Animagus, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Marauders' Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-07
Updated: 2015-07-07
Packaged: 2018-04-08 02:33:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4287405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hypnosistrash/pseuds/Hypnosistrash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter Pettigrew's story, from his perspective</p>
            </blockquote>





	Biography of a Rat

**Author's Note:**

> Peter is such an interesting character, I wanted to explore his experience of Hogwarts and how he made his way into Voldemort's shadow

He had never been brave.   
He stumbled out from under the hat in a hurry, and he was sure the others thought it was enthusiasm, but he just didn’t want to give the ratty old thing time to change its mind.  
Gryffindor. House of the brave and daring.  
He was hiding under a table in their too-small house, and Mummy was angry again, she had drunk too much and broken a bottle in her rage, and Daddy didn’t have time to reach for his wand before the curse hit him, and Peter scrambled upstairs before she grew bored and turned to him.  
A tall, dark-haired boy tossed himself on the seat next to him and grinned at his shocked face and said “You surprised too?? Mum’s gonna be in a right state; I broke the family tradition. First non-Slytherin in decades I reckon.”  
Pale lips pulled over too-large teeth and he squeaked out a feeble “yeah.”  
He wondered if this was all some sort of joke.

He met Remus in Potions. He was too nervous, too clumsy, he tried a scatterbrained shortcut and melted a hole in his cauldron. The sandy-haired boy next to him smiled calmly and helped him mop up the mess. Peter thought he looked tired.

“Hey guys,” James said, pulling Peter after him. “This’s Peter! Caught ‘im trying to sneak outta here with his dinner. Whaddya think we should do about that, eh?”   
He was joking, Peter knew, but still he quailed, clutching to his wadded-up bundle of bread and chops and trying to vanish into the floor.  
“Hey, I know him!” crowed Sirius. “I met you night of Sorting, didn’t I?”  
“Let go of him James,” said Remus with quiet humor, “you’re not gonna make friends if you kidnap everyone you meet.” He moved over on the bench and gestured for Peter to sit next to him.

“Woah!” Watery grey eyes widened in awe. “Where’d you GET all this??”  
“Nicked it, o’course,” drawled Sirius, munching on one of about two dozen pastries he’d returned to the Common Room with. Almost reverently, Peter took one, wondering how he’d ever managed to befriend people this cool.  
“I don’t feel well guys,” Remus muttered, and the shadows under his eyes did seem more pronounced. “I’m going to the Nurse.”  
“I’ll walk you there!” James offered, but Remus shook his head sharply and said “No. Thanks. I’ll be fine,” and was gone.

He’d gotten Christmas presents before, of course, but he’d never liked Christmas. Mummy always drank too much. He’d never had friends to have snowball fights with, or eat with, or argue with in front of a fire.   
He was glad Remus had stayed. 

James fell in love with Lily Evans third year.   
That didn’t mean he didn’t flirt with other girls, or snog them, but Peter noticed it was always only when Lily might see.   
He called after her in the hallways, and her friendly interest soon turned into annoyance.   
“She sure spends a lotta time with that Slytherin prat,” James would mutter, and Sirius would heartily agree. Peter thought that there was something familiar about Severus’ face, some unspeakable sadness Peter had only ever seen in mirrors, but Peter’s friends hated him, and that was good enough for Peter to hate him as well.

“I’m not feeling well,” said Remus when they asked if he wanted to go fly around the Quidditch pitch for a bit. They all looked concerned by now, but he glared at them, and there was something dark in his eyes, and they let him go by himself, as they always did.  
When James and Sirius left, Peter followed him.

“Why didn’t you TELL us??” roared James, kicking one of the many dust-covered chairs that filled the empty classroom.  
“Because of THIS!” Remus snarled back, and it really was close to a snarl, and Peter wanted to curl up and die right there on the floor under the betrayed gaze of his friend. “Because you’d treat me like some sort of, of… of monster! Because you’d tell people!” His head snapped around, eyes boring into Peter’s, who ducked his head and thought of when he used to hide under tables.  
“Mate,” said Sirius, looking unusually pale and grim. “Y’got us all wrong. We don’t think you’re a monster! We think you’re an arse for not telling your friends. Merlin’s beard, every month you disappear and we don’t know what the hell’s wrong with you, and all the time you’re sitting in some old house by yourself as a bloody great wolf! We could’ve HELPED you, Remus! You don’t have to be alone!”  
Remus stopped, confusion written on every line of his face, and Peter could see his eyes were unusually bright.  
“You… you don’t… think I’m…?”  
“A friend,” said James firmly, stepping around Peter and putting a hand on Remus’ shoulder. “That’s all we think you are. Got that?”  
Remus nodded, lowering his head and rubbing his eyes, a small, disbelieving smile forming on his face, but it was still two weeks before he would talk to Peter again.

Torturing Snivellus had become a pastime of theirs. Remus never really liked it, but it always sort of impressed Peter. He wished someday he could be as bold and clever and strong as James and Sirius. He didn’t pay attention to Snape’s sad eyes anymore. He’d tossed in his lot with the crowd of Slytherins who practiced Dark spells in the dungeons and called people the M-word. He wasn’t friends with James and Sirius. Peter figured he deserved it.

James got it on his first try, Sirius on his third. Peter had read and re-read what he was supposed to do so many times, but in the darkness of the moonlit bathroom, with his two best friends looking at him from inhuman faces, he panicked. He tried… so many times, he ended up losing count, and he just couldn’t force it out. He was close to tears, but no, not now, he couldn’t be THAT pathetic, but all he wanted to do was sink into the floor…  
And as he wished it he could feel it, he was dropping to all fours and the ground was rushing to meet him as fur rippled along his shrinking frame and his nose pushed forward on his face, and his spine stretched into something fleshy that lashed against the floor.  
A rat. A rat. Of course he was a rat. Of course, while James and Sirius were proud and strong and ferocious, he was even tinier, even uglier, even more useless…  
“Alright!” said James enthusiastically, reverting back to his human shape. “We all did it! And look, it’s perfect! Two of us to keep Moony here at bay, and one of us to get into all the small spaces!”   
He smiled down at Peter, and Peter was glad no one could see how badly he was shaking. 

“She hates me. HATES me! Did you see the look on her face! And after he called her… that!” James sputtered late one night in the Common Room. The fire was dying and Remus kept having to re-light it in order to write his essay. Peter’s was only half-done, but James was talking, which meant everything else was on hold.  
“I know Prongs,” said Sirius sympathetically, but by now he’d heard it too often to summon much enthusiasm. “Witches. Irrational, the lot of ‘em.” Peter agreed fervently.   
“You know, she might warm up to you if you pulled your head out of your trousers,” Remus muttered, not looking up from his parchment.   
“What was that?” James demanded testily.  
“I’m saying that maybe if you stopped acting like you owned the place and deliberately messing your hair up whenever she walks by, she might not think you were such an oaf,” Remus retorted, calm but tense. “And if you stopped hexing any bloke that comes within five yards of her,” he added as an afterthought, pulling a Transfiguration book towards him.  
“You saying I was out of line back there?” James snapped.  
“That is EXACTLY what I’m saying,” Remus said, scooping up parchment and quills and textbooks. “Maybe if you want her to treat you like the man you think you are, you shouldn’t act like a child. Now goodnight.”  
Peter watched him trot up the stairs, thinking for a brief moment he might have a point, before Sirius said, “He was right out of line there Prongs. It’s just exam stress though. I’m sure he didn’t mean it,” and James, still looking shaken, went back to ranting about Snivellus. 

They wrote a map. It was a work of glory, everything they had ever found, all the passages and corners hidden from students, probably for centuries. James and Remus worked the spells, while Sirius drew the castle. Wormtail helped where he could.

He thought he might like to be an Auror like his friends. When he told McGonagal, she blinked at him, trying to hide her pity, and handed him flyers, telling him not to rush blindly into his future.

Dumbledore approached them at graduation. Peter had only spoken with him a handful of times. He didn’t like the way the older wizard looked at him. He had the distinct feeling the old man could see everything in him, even things he himself didn’t know.  
He offered them a place in the Order, and when Peter and Remus looked doubtful, he looked them in the eyes and said “all of you.”

“You??”  
Lily Evans stood across from them as they were ushered into the Headquarters. Her red hair was tied back and her arms were folded, and Peter thought that she was far too terrifying and beautiful for any of them to ever have a chance with.  
“We don’t need MORE bullies,” she snapped at Dumbledore, who gave her that knowing smile of his and walked by, saying nothing.  
She glowered at them, jerking her head and leading them inside.  
“Evans-” Prongs began, and she whirled, wand pointed directly between his eyes.  
“We are not school children anymore,” she hissed. “So no more ‘Hey Evans!’ ‘Looking good Evans!’ ‘Evans did I tell you I won a Quidditch match?’ We are fighting Voldemort, and you WILL take it seriously, or you won’t HAVE to wait for a Death Eater to kill you. Got it??”  
Padfoot looked shocked, and Moony snickered, so softly maybe only Peter could hear it.  
“I was just going to… say congratulations,” Prongs stammered, and it was the first time Wormtail had heard him stumble on his words. “On your NEWTS. All O’s. I heard. Congratulations.”  
Lily Evans’ impossibly green eyes widened for a brief moment, before narrowing again, and she lead them on without another word.

It was terrifying. There were flashes of green everywhere, huge stamping feet and angry shouts. He was supposed to be finding a way in, a crack in the wall, anything, they needed a better position…  
He felt himself freeze, was lifted into the air to see an inhuman face, skin so pale it was nearly translucent, eyes that glowed red, with catlike slits for pupils.  
The lipless mouth curled into a grin, and the pupils were growing wider, and he was falling into them, into a flash of memories and thoughts and impressions that left his mind battered and dizzy and terrified, and still the figure grinned.  
“HEY! GET AWAY FROM HIM!” roared a voice, and a spell shot from James’ wand, which the figure easily deflected, but then two more came from behind, from a snarling redhead who vanished before he could return fire, and then a hulking black dog clamped his fangs around the figure’s arm as James fired another spell, and Wormtail fell, plopping gracelessly on the stone below, before scampering into the building.

He was having terrible dreams. Dreams of screaming and burning houses and blood-like red eyes…

They were worried. Sirius’ dog form was no longer a good cover. He was the obvious choice for the Fidelius Charm, and if Voldemort managed to capture him, he could pry it from his head.   
In secret, they asked Wormtail. The red eyes flashed into his mind, but he blinked them away and solemnly agreed, all the while feeling their pull like a weight in his stomach.

“It will be easier this way,” said the voice, and though it was high and cold, it purred seductively in Wormtail’s ear. “Less death. Less waste. They will lose anyway. It is not betrayal. It is minimalizing casualties.”  
Wormtail’s thoughts were hazy, and he found when he blinked his eyelids were heavier. He wasn’t sure if it was enchantment of if he was just paralyzed with fear. The figure’s face had no nose, and his arm was adorned with a skull with the tongue of a snake. Peter dimly pondered how snakes ate rats, and children’s tales about snakes bewitching their prey…  
“You will be rewarded. You will be great. You will be significant and important,” hissed the voice, and the words were worming into his thoughts and taking root, so that he didn’t notice the tone of victory they held.  
“Godric’s Hollow,” he murmured, eyes half-lidded, as thoughts of finally being worthy filled his mind.

The spell was broken, but it had tainted him. He could feel something in his thoughts, though he convinced himself it was just his shame and self-loathing. He was pathetic. Pathetic pathetic pathetic pathetic. He was in danger. They would come for him. All of them, Death Eaters and Order alike. He was a waste, he was a RAT.   
There was a roar overhead and Sirius was leaping off that motorbike of his, screaming at him, traitor and monster and bastard, and something in him snapped and he used a curse he was dimly aware of the Dark Lord teaching him, a curse that caused fire and chaos and death…  
And he cut off his finger with a spell and turned into his true form and ran.

He found a family of redheads, and they were poor and cheery and kind, and the mother never broke bottles, and the father never had to dodge curses, and no one hid under tables.

The boy he now belonged to befriended Harry Potter. He couldn’t find it in him to hate the boy. He looked like James and spoke like Lily. When the Slytherins came into the train car, he bit one of them, for old time’s sake.

Sirius escaped after 12 years. He thought after all this time…  
There was a brokenness in his eyes, too. Wormtail saw it as he sat on the boy’s shoulder and looked at the front page of the Daily Prophet. The Ministry’s Dementors had done what the Dark Lord had never gotten the chance to.   
He would come to kill him. Wormtail knew it.

Remus returned that same year. He looked older, he looked more tired. He pretended to be sick. Severus Snape gave him potions, and Wormtail wondered if Snape saw or cared about the muted apologies that shone from Remus’ tired eyes each time he took the goblet.  
He hid in the bookshelves high above and watched Remus shudder into a sad, tired wolf, and lie on the stone floor, looking bitterly out at the moon.  
He only did it once. He didn’t think he could stand to do it again.

The cat knew who he was. There was an intelligence in animals, a way that all sentient creatures could communicate, and it looked at him and in one brief second it knew.   
Then there came news of sightings around the castle. Harry Potter held the map he had helped write. The map that showed true identities. He would see.  
He couldn’t stay any longer; Padfoot was getting closer.   
He faked his own death and ran.  
It had worked once, right?

It didn’t work. His two old friends were going to kill him together, and what could he say that they would understand? He couldn’t explain the eyes, or the terror, or the sweet cancerous idea that he might one day be important.  
The boy who looked like James stood in front of their wands, and told them James wouldn’t have wanted him dead. Wormtail knew he was wrong. 

The red eyes continued to haunt him. He thought they’d be gone by now, like their master, but they painted his vision bloody when Remus began to change.   
He ran. He had no choice.

He could communicate well enough with other rats, he found. He’d never needed to before, but the eyes burned his psyche like coals, and maybe if he found their owner he could know some form of peace.  
When he met the witch who recognized him, he took her with him. He didn’t know what else to do.  
It all worked out in the end, he guessed.

The Dark Lord wanted to kill Harry Potter. Of course he did. It made sense. Wormtail learned quickly not to question his Lord. He tried not to look at the monstrous snake. He was no Parseltongue, but he could understand her in the way all prey could.   
“I will kill you,” she told him with her eyes and voice and coils. “I will feast upon your worthless form.”

He should have expected this. Why wouldn’t the Dark Lord have him cut off his hand? He was the lowest of low slaves, after all.   
He’d cut off a finger in the past. What was the whole hand?  
But god, it hurt.  
He hated himself for crying, but at least the Dark Lord’s disgust hurt less than James’.

When the Dark Lord replaced his hand, his gratitude was real. A reward. At last a reward. It was beautiful and powerful. It was the only valuable part of him.

He wouldn’t allow himself to be glad when Potter escaped. The eyes would see. The silver hand twitched when his thoughts ventured too close to sympathy.

It became a pattern. He found it easier than expected to live in fear. Severus took great pleasure in calling him Wormtail. They all did, but when he looked at Snape, he could see victory in dirtying the name James had created.   
Every time they cursed him, he screamed in agony and begged no more, please, no more, but he knew there would be more, and he knew he deserved all of it.

They captured Harry at last. (He tried not to think of him in terms of last names. When he said Potter, he had to choke back memories like vomit.)

They were trying to escape. By some miracle of desperation he caught Harry by the throat, and the silver hand pressed into his windpipe with strength Peter Pettigrew had never had. But the too-green eyes pleaded with him, and James’ mouth gasped out “You owe me,” and for a brief second the glowing red eyes were gone, and he loosened his grip and blinked in shock.   
And then the silver hand was turning on its own, moving towards his neck, and a chorus of useless useless worthless sniveling failed servant was crashing over his mind as the fingers closed on his throat, and he struggled and thrashed and the two boys tried to help and he knew it was no use but it didn’t matter.  
He had never been brave…   
His vision was darkening and his thrashing had stilled.  
He had never been worthy of his friends, of Gryffindor house…  
Dimly he felt something rattle out of his lungs.  
Maybe now…


End file.
